Russian Religious Folk Poetry of Literary Origin in a Manuscript Tradition of the Russian Old Believers

• In Event: Folk Religious Imagination I: Russia

Abstract

Religious folk poetry (dukhovnye stikhi) that are known to the Russian Old Believers has been attracting a lot of scholarly attention due to their complex origin, sophisticated interpretation of the Orthodox Christian beliefs and a large variety of the oral and written repertoire. The Old believers not only made a significant contribution in preserving the mainstream folk religious poetry by recording and circulating popular poems in their manuscripts. For more than three centuries, they have been producing their own folk religious poetry and authored religious poems. A large number of these poems appear to be the original interpretation or edition of well know folk text by the well-educated Old Believer scribers. Some of the poems have been compiled from various written sources by anonymous Old Believers men of letter. However, poetry of literary origin was routinely included, copies and circulated in folk anthologies of the religious songs and poetry alongside and in the same way as any other with folk poetry. My paper discusses a little-know area of studies, didactic poetry that originates in the medieval Russian literary tradition. In particular, the research examines two previously unknown and unpublished poems that are based on the plots borrowed from a very popular reading of 17-18th centuries, the book The Great Mirror (Velikoec Zertsalo): “A story about the original sin” and “A story about temptation of Saint Anthony”. The single copies of these poems were included in two manuscripts of 19th century produced by the Old Believers of the priestless brunch (bespopovskoe soglasie) and are kept in Drevlekhranilishche library collections in St Petersburg (Russia).

Author

• Tatiana Vladimirovna Filosofova, U of North Texas